


Galas, Kisses and Cake

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (of the mild sorts), Anti-Moustache Propaganda, Dumb Banter, Flirting, Getting Together, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Humor, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Mystery Meat Sauce, Return of the Fertility Statue, Romance, Sexy Cake Reveals, ridiculous conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 10:19:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17384660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Draco can't remember why he still goes to gala after tedious-as-fuck gala. Then he spots Harry Potter and recalls exactly why he still attends every last one of them.





	Galas, Kisses and Cake

**Author's Note:**

> Well I dont know know why this fic exists but lets just say I was lying in bed unable to sleep and the voice of Draco Malfoy appeared in my head insulting Slughorn's moustache and this is the product of that.
> 
> A million thank you's to M for the quick beta and for your lovely comments !! All mistakes remaining are mine.
> 
>  
> 
> _Disclaimer before we start, vegan food is not as horrific as I have made it out to be for the sake of comedy._

It was watching Slughorn’s moustache dance atop his upper lip as he spoke that Draco Malfoy came to the conclusion that Slughorn was in fact  _ the  _ most irritating being — magical, non-magical, human and creature all included — he had ever had the misfortune of speaking to. And Draco liked to consider himself a bit of an expert on irritating beings seeing as he himself was one for the majority of his youth.

Also, Draco had to know who on earth had convinced Slughorn it would be a good idea to let that monstrosity grow on his face. Had they done it as a joke? If so, hats off to them because Draco found increasingly hard to keep a straight face as Slughorn spoke. It was as if a hairy caterpillar had crawled onto his face while he was sleeping and refused to move. Draco didn’t think Slughorn’s upper lip would be the most comfortable place to rest, what with the amount he insisted on talking and the exaggerated shape his mouth took in an attempt to mimic a proper Southern accent.

“Isn’t that right?” Slughorn chortled.

“Right you are again, Sir.” Draco had no idea to what he’d just agreed. Hopefully it wasn’t anything too scandalous, then again it was  _ Slughorn  _ he was stuck talking too. He’d probably just agreed that Slughorn was actually the mastermind behind Potter’s defeat of Voldemort those years back because Slughorn had— 

Draco couldn’t even begin to imagine what reason Slughorn would give, but he was sure that he’d find one. Slughorn was talented like that. And as an semi-retired-bullshitter, Draco had to admire him for it.

When he managed to escape Slughorn’s clutches, Draco was going to kill Theo for leaving him to deal with the fool alone. Perhaps he’d spell a nice mustache onto Theo’s face; after all, Draco knew  _ exactly  _ what said mustache could look like.

A bell rung, signalling that it was time for sit down for supper and Draco resisted jumping for joy by the skin of his teeth. It was only years of lectures from his parents that had him smiling politely at Slughorn before making a speedy exit — though of course, he still moved at a socially acceptable pace. Wouldn’t want someone to judge him for the speed he walked at after all, not when there were much more apt things they could judge him for.

Draco had made peace with their judgement seeing as it was rather deserved. However, tonight wasn’t about being judged for his past, it was about the work of Penelope Clearwater and her promotion of using magic to help clean up the environment. Draco was sure there was a pun in there somewhere with her surname and was extremely disappointed the charity’s publicist hadn’t decided to utilise it.

Tonight was also the third gala he attended this month and it was beginning to get mildly tedious to say the least. He believed in all the causes and genuinely wanted to support them, however, he was starting to fear that his gala-smile might become permanently etched onto his face. He’d found himself using it on Astoria at brunch the other day, much to their horror.

The size of the donation and Draco’s increasing status in the charity circle meant that he was now seated at the second table, a drastic improvement from his first gala after the war where they’d near enough tried to sit him in the kitchen. At least in the kitchen he would be spared from inane small talk. The elves probably had more interesting things to say than half the wizards in attendance. Draco wished he could just write a cheque and be done with the whole thing, but here he was; doomed to spend his Saturday night making conversation with people like  _ Slughorn _ .

He’d really imagined his twenties being more exciting when he was younger.

The evening wasn’t a total disaster, not when he spotted a familiar messy head of hair in the seat beside his name tag. Potter somehow became his saving grace at these events lately and seeing Potter was half the reason Draco still attended. Not that he planned to tell Potter that.

“Have you seen the menu?” He asked, slipping into place beside Potter. Potter who looked about as thrilled to be here as Draco felt.

Potter smiled at Draco’s arrival. “You know I like it to be a surprise.”

“So you don’t want to make any guesses about what we’re having?”

Potter sighed. “Just tell me it isn’t fish.”

“It’s not fish,” Draco said.

Potter turned his full attention to Draco, brows knotted. “Is it  _ worse  _ than fish?”

“How are we defining worse?”

“Worse than the eel dish last week.”

Draco paused, lips pursed in thought for dramatic effect. “Depends how you feel about vegan food.”

Potter groaned, dropping his head onto the table in a way that would make Draco’s mother sob. A part of Draco admired the way Potter didn’t give two hoots about what people thought of him, he had no time to spare for trying to be anything other than who he was. Then again, Potter being Potter — the boy saviour and a whole other host of frankly nauseating epithets — could arrive to the gala naked and dance on the table and the whole wizarding world would applaud him.

Draco could see the headlines now:

_ The Chosen One Chooses To Bare All (Literally) _

_ Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived, Lives Free of Restraining Formal Wear _

_ Our Saviour Shows— _

“Malfoy?”

“Sorry,” Draco said, realising he’d got rather carried away with his  _ Prophet  _ interpretations. Perhaps it was a good thing he’d never gone into the media with some of those headlines… “What did you say?”

Potter laughed, now resting his chin on his palm. “I said why can’t any of these places just serve a burger for once.”

“How heathen.” Draco sniffed. “ _ Just  _ a burger. Honestly at least demand standards Potter, don’t settle for anything less than bacon and cheese on that burger.”

“Bacon, cheese, and burger sauce.”

“What. The fuck. Is burger sauce?” One point to Potter, Draco was utterly lost.

Potter grinned. “You know like the special sauce on a burger.”

“Wow that certainly clears it up.” Draco lowered his voice as someone at the front began speaking.

“I think it’s a kind of meat sauce.”

“Please never say that again.”

“What, meat sauce?”

“No, don’t say  _ ‘I think’ _ , yes of course I meant never say  _ ‘meat sauce’ _ again, you moron.”

Potter snorted and someone at their table glared at him before realising who they were glaring at and promptly turned bright red. Draco pretended to be utterly fascinated with what the key speaker was saying.

“What’s wrong with meat sauce?”

“What could possibly be right about it?”

Draco presumed Potter conceded his point when instead of arguing in favour of  _ meat sauce  _ he murmured, “Witch in the red hat, ten o’clock.” Draco followed Potter’s gaze and quirked his eyebrows for Potter to continue. “She’s trying to figure out how to divorce her husband because she wants to run away with her house elf.”

Draco nodded, schooling his face straight. Potter had started strong, but was definitely cheating since Draco had used elf-house sex last time. It was their ritual now; every time they were bored at one of these galas, they would pick random people from the crowd and make up scandalous and ridiculous stories about their life. They’d run out of scandalous a couple of months back, so now most of their stories were ridiculous. Draco didn’t mind though, he rather enjoyed the bizarre nowadays. Besides, there was once a time that he’d have thought the idea of Potter and he laughing together was too obscure to even entertain and now seeing Potter was the highlight of his month.

Life needed a little weirdness, he had learned. It didn’t do one any favours to take oneself too seriously.

“Wizard in the purple robes, third table to our left.” He waited for Potter to clock onto who he was talking about. “Fucked the giant squid and is running an animal rights campaign with the hope of one day being able to proudly proclaim himself a squid fucker.”

The corner of Potter’s mouth flickered. “Wizard currently drinking, just to your left. He’s engaging in an illicit plot to take down the Ministry due to—” Draco never got to hear exactly why the Ministry was being taken down because at that moment their first course appeared on their plates and Potter got distracted. “What is this?”

Draco poked it with his fork, watching it wobble. “Some sort of jelly, I think.”

“Jelly should be pudding.”

“Actually if I recall, pudding was some sort of vegan chocolate truffle.”

Potter pulled a face like Draco had just stolen his first born. “Maybe they’re trying to kill us off, that’s their plan for fixing the planet.”

“Death by vegan jelly?”

“Exactly.”

Draco poked his jelly again. “Merlin, can you think of a worse way to die.”

“I think I preferred the dragon,” Potter grumbled, glaring at his plate as if trying to silently and wandlessly Transfigure it into something more appetising. “At least it was upfront about it.”

“Agreed, I much prefer things to be upfront about their intentions regarding my life.”

Potter laughed. “Exactly! At least have the courtesy to tell me if you’re going to try kill me.”

“Manners are everything.” They grinned at each other before grimly turning back to their plates. It was going to be a long night, but at least they had each other.

* * *

 

The next gala was a celebration of the History Society, which meant wheeling out a load of old artefacts and wandering around staring at them as you counted down how long it would be till you were allowed to eat.

Draco studied the small statue in front of him. It was encased firmly in warded glass, not that Draco understood why. He couldn’t think of any reason on earth anyone would want to protect it, and if he was in charge of the exhibit, he’d have accidentally dropped it by now. Sure, it  _ promised  _ fertility, but was that really worth it. It looked like someone had started building a statue of a human and got bored halfway through, and so they had stuck a dick on top. As a head. It was a literal dick-head statue.

“And what can you tell me about this?” Potter’s voice was low and deep in his ear, and Draco just about refrained from jumping. He glanced over his shoulder and Potter grinned at him, hair even messier than usual today. It suited him.

“Well,” he said, letting his voice drop into its most pompous drawl. Potter’s eyes lit up. “Here we have the rare and most excotic fertility statue. It has been passed down through generations of the great wizarding families of Britain—”

“That’s disgusting.”

“No one said they had to fuck it,” Draco said primly. “Your mind went to the gutter there.”

Laughing, Potter rolled his eyes. “Sorry, please go on.”

“Thank you. Now, as I was saying, this statue has been passed down through generations of great wizarding families, believed to have been carved from rock by Merlin himself during his quest to produce a worthy heir. It is said that if the statue is beside the bed when fornication occurs, it would bless the child with powers greater than anything seen before.”

Potter snorted. “Sounds like something your dad would own.”

Draco flipped him off because tragically, he was right and that was not something Draco wanted to think about. Ever.

“What does it actually do?” Potter asked, leaning closer to Draco as he peered at the label.

Draco shrugged. “Something way more boring than my story probably.” He could smell Potter’s aftershave, it was woodsy and intoxicating, and clearly this bubbly was stronger than Draco had thought.

“Does it have tits or eyes on its chest?” Potter asked. He was firmly into Draco’s personal space now, near enough pressed against Draco’s back.

“Tits, obviously Potter.” Draco sighed. “Have you ever met someone with chest-height eyes?”

“No, but I’ve never met anyone with a dick for a head either.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Draco turned slightly so he could meet Potter’s eyes. “I feel I’ve met a few people like that.”

Potter’s grin spread wide across his face, revealing the small dimple in his left cheek. “Me too, now that I think about it.”

“You better not be talking about me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” And then Potter winked at him before stepping back and gesturing to the rest of the exhibits around them. Draco let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding and tried not to think about the fact he’d like it if Potter came back. He could see the way Potter’s dress robes clung to his shoulders, which was frankly unfair.

“You going to tell me about the rest of the exhibit?” Potter asked, motioning for Draco to lead the way.

“Of course,” Draco rolled his shoulders back and pushed all strange, intrusive Potter thoughts to the side. “If we look over here, we see can a gold coin that once belonged to the famous prat Harry Potter and was used to buy—”

“Fuck off,” Potter laughed, nudging him with his shoulder.

“I can stop if you’d like?” Draco raised his brows.

Potter shook his head, still grinning. Draco’s stomach swooped at the sensation of being the one holding Potter’s full attention. All these people in the room and  _ he  _ was the one Potter wanted to speak to. He was the one that Potter had chosen to hang out with, as if they friends… however,  _ friends  _ didn’t seem to do justice to the way he felt every time Potter threw back his head and laughed.  _ Friends  _ didn’t capture that sense of  _ something more  _ hanging just out of Draco’s reach, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, or — or perhaps he just didn’t want to name it. For when he named it, he had to acknowledge it, and he’d be left wanting. He was so tired of wanting more.

Though as Potter leaned in close, conspiratorial smile on his face, Draco accepted the fact it was inevitable. He would always be wanting more from Potter, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be happy with what he had now.

And as Potter brushed off a ministry official to continue talking to Draco, Draco could admit he was happy. Despite the ridiculous crowd and boring exhibit, walking around with Potter he was having fun. More so than he had been in a long time.

* * *

 

Poking at his overdone beef, Draco was forced to wonder if the rare Floofleganger really needed saving. Especially seeing as it was so rare, in fact, they had yet to be sighted by anyone other than Lovegood and her ‘team’. Draco would admittedly be more enthusiastic if he wasn’t sat beside an old witch who had mispronounced  _ Draco  _ three times and spent the rest of the evening talking about her cats. Of which there were many. Thirty-two in fact, and Draco probably knew about their lives than he did his own mother’s at this point.

He’d spent most of the evening staring at the back of Potter’s head until Potter had rudely walked off about five minutes ago and not come back. The flicks and curls of Potter’s hair were actually quite fascinating to watch, the way they seemed to have a complete life of their own.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he murmured, reaching his breaking point when she leant across him to bring his other neighbour in on the cat fun.

He took a left at the bathrooms, deciding fresh air was actually what he needed in this precise moment. Fresh air and peace and quiet. And absolutely no talk of cats.

His nightmares were going to be full of the old bint crooning  _ pussy  _ into his ear. Draco shuddered.

It was warm out, the gentle temperature of dying summer days. The sun had fully set but the gardens extending beneath him were lit, orbs of light floating beside the paths to guide people on their way. He could make out the luminous glow of the fountain in the centre, a fountain that he’d pushed Pansy into when they were nine. He’d thought it was hilarious at the time, until his parents took him to task over it.

“Knut for your thoughts.”

Draco turned, smile already on his face at the sound of Potter’s voice. “Just thinking about the past.”

“Oooh, dangerous.” Potter strode forward, the golden flecks of his black robes catching in the lights. “How about I bring you back to the present?” Pulling his arms out from behind his back, he presented Draco with a plate. A plate with a mouth watering piece of chocolate cake on and two forks.

“Tell me it’s not vegan.”

Potter scoffed, settling down onto the ground and gesturing for Draco to join him. “Who do you take me for?”

“Thank Merlin.” Draco grabbed a fork and tried the cake, moaning at the way it melted in his mouth. “This wasn’t on the menu.”

“No it wasn’t, but I had no intention of eating whatever a  _ damp freedlecake  _ was, so I had a quick word with the elves working in the back.”

“Friends in high places.”

“It’s who you know, not what you know.”

“You’d have made a good Slytherin.”

Potter grinned as if there was a joke Draco was missing. “You think so?”

Draco shrugged and had another bite of cake, it was the safest answer. He couldn’t even begin to entertain the thought of Potter being a Slytherin, how different both their lives could have been had they been friends all those years ago.

Potter made no move to leave once they finished their cake, which worked great for Draco so they continued to sit there, staring out over the gardens with the night sky shining down on them. It was the most fun Draco had at the gala all night.

“You know I think I’m a bit done with all this shit.”

Draco’s heart sunk. “Oh?”

“Yeah, like I don’t even know why I’m still turning up at this point.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Potter sighed. “Well, no that’s not true. I do know why I’m still turning up, but I’m starting to think there’d be an easier way to do it.”

“Then why don’t you do that?”

“Guess I was a bit scared.” Potter chewed on his bottom lip, brows knotted.

“I didn’t know you did scared.” Draco, however, did do scared. He did scared fantastically. In fact, he was terrified that he’d been reading far too much into his nights with Potter and perhaps Potter didn’t particularly care for them at all.

“Oh trust me, I get scared a lot.”

“And what are you scared of?” Draco’s heart pounded in his chest as Potter cocked his head, staring at Draco. Could Potter see what he was scared of?

“I was scared of doing this for one,” Potter said, and Draco didn’t have time to question what he meant because before he could, Potter was leaning in and kissing him. It was hesitant in a way that Draco never imagined Potter could be, and hadn’t he learned a whole hoax of things tonight. Cats had unique nose patterns, Harry Potter got scared, Harry Potter kissed gently like he was afraid Draco would pull away. As if Draco had ever not been prepared to meet Potter for every word, every spell, every punch, laugh, joke and now kiss.

Potter pulled back, lips inches from Draco’s. Neither of them moved.

“You were scared of doing that?” Draco asked.

“Terrified.”

“Want to do it again to really conquer your fear?”

Potter laughed and kissed him again, deeper this time so Draco could taste the chocolate on his tongue and feel Potter’s fingers in his hair.

They broke off the kiss, smiling at each other. “Took your time,” Draco said, reaching out and taking Potter’s hand.

Potter entwined their fingers and rolled his eyes. “Oh did I?”

“Yeah, now I can stop coming to these awful things.”

Potter laughed, shaking his head. “I knew you weren’t here out of the goodness of your heart.”

“Hey, I really care about the Floofleganger!”

“Then you should know it’s the Floofledooper.”

_ Fuck _ . 

“Want to go find more cake?” Distraction was Draco’s greatest hope.

The wry curve of Potter’s smile told Draco Potter had seen straight through him. 

“Sure, just I want to do one thing first.” Potter pulled him in for another kiss and well, Draco was sure the cake would wait. Right then they were preoccupied.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the fic because I really had a lot of fun writing it, Harry and Draco have such a hilarious dynamic and I wanted to give them a bit of fun !!!
> 
> Kudos and Comments are the best thing since sliced bread <3


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